


Iphigenion

by Salomonderiel



Category: Star Trek
Genre: Angst, Humor, M/M, Slow Burn, spy AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-14
Updated: 2015-10-14
Packaged: 2018-04-26 10:38:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5001526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Salomonderiel/pseuds/Salomonderiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And thus Leonard McCoy, highly qualified research medic for the Defence Intelligence Agency and loudly proclaimed aviophobe, found himself on a tiny, personal jet for an eleven hour journey to become an armed investigator for a murder investigation he wanted no part in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Iphigenion

**Author's Note:**

> This is entirely dedicated to Iona, for her 21st birthday present. I really, really hope it lives up to the hype. You're awesome, bro. At this rate you're getting part 2 for your Christmas present.
> 
> This is a wonderfully cliche spy story, basically. It'll be more or less obvious what's going on depending on how well you know the more recent movies. 
> 
> Title of whole thing is from Greek mythology. Title of the first chapter is also Greek, and inspired by the song 'Agape' by Bear's Den.

“Victim is sixty-four years of age, five foot ten inches, and in good physical-”

Someone sneezed.

Leonard took a moment to compose himself, before reaching up to turn off the Dictaphone hanging over the corpse. “Why are you _here?_ ” he demanded, turning to face a skinny kid wielding an iPad and apparently doing fuck-all of use. “Who are you, some bigwig’s kid looking to get work experience?”

The small child masquerading as a functioning adult blanched, but smiled widely nonetheless. “No, sir,” he said, voice thick with an Eastern-European accent. Probably Ukranian, or something. Leonard highly doubted the bosses would let a Russian sit in on such a sensitive investigation, as most of them seemed to believe they were still living in the 70s. “No, I am Junior Researcher Chekov, sir, and I have been asked to take notes during your autopsy. For… for record purposes, sir. Not that they don’t trust _your_ notes, of course, sir, but it would be more efficient if-”

“And you’ll be able to follow and understand everything I say?” Leonard demanded.

The kid – Chekov – frowned, something that bordered dangerously close to an insubordinate _scowl_. Perhaps Leonard’s first reading of him had been slightly off. “Sir, I can assure you that I am _exceedingly_ fluent in English and various dialects thereof-”

Leonard waved him off. “Not what I meant. Do you have any medical training? If I start spewing anatomical terminology, are you gonna be able to keep up and not misspell anything?”

Chekov nodded. “Indeed, sir. Without any trouble, sir.” 

It was highly possible that the kid was nowhere near capable as he believed, especially if his age was to be taken into account. But then again, Leonard really didn’t care, so.

“Subject is in overall good physical condition, aside from the selection of holes in his chest,” Leonard continued, angling the ceiling light to get a better look at the holes. “Gunshot, close range, gun no further than two meters from the victim, six of them with a very small cluster radius. Four were through-and-through, one, most likely the immediate cause of death, went straight through his heart. The others could all individually have caused his death within a space of, approximately, thirty minutes. One to the gut, bullet presumably lodged in the fundus of the stomach, two to the left lung and one perfectly slicing through left main bronchial stem…” words trailing off, Leonard ignored the bullet wounds and turned his attention to the arms, hands, fingers. “No bruising apparent, save for-” he quickly lifted the body from the autopsy table, noting vague discolouration, “save for some slight haemorrhaging on the back, presumably from when the body fell backwards with the force of the bullets. No contusions around his fingers, no scratches, nothing.”

“Which would suggest that Captain Pike did not struggle against his murderer,” a peppy little voice chimed in.

Leonard turned to look at the kid again, who, quite politely, had the decency to flush. “Are you gonna talk _much_ , or…?”

“Sorry mister McCoy, sir,” Chekov muttered, looking as if he was hoping he could vanish into his tablet.

Satisfied, Leonard nodded. “And it’s doctor,” he corrected gently. “I didn’t suffer all those years through med school to get called ‘mister’ by kids like you. But yes,” he said, moving away from the body to grab the instruments that he’d be needing next. “The lack of any other wounds would imply that there was no struggle. That, combined with the proximity of the shooter and location where they found the victim’s body would imply that he knew his murderer. This in itself provides great support for – for the – this greatly supports the prevailing theory-”

The scalpel shook in his hand. For a moment he tried to steady his hand, as if it was some drunkard loss of control or something else easily fixed, but when nothing changed he slammed his hand down on the table, the force jarring the blade of the scalpel into the side of his palm. “ _Dammit_ kid!” Leonard yelled, furiously swinging to face Chekov, “Why are you here? Why am _I_ here? They know who did this, why do they need me to cut this man open? Let him rest in peace for fuck’s sake!”

Chekov looked terrified, and some still calm part of Leonard realised that the kid’s position was vaguely comparable to being face with a mad scientist wielding a knife. “I – I’m afraid I only know as much as you do, doctor!” he protested, his tone leaning more to logical reasoning than panicked excuses. “I was told, go, listen, record, make notes of the Captain’s autopsy, make sure it all in order, that is _all,_ sir!”

 _Breathe, McCoy,_ Leonard reminded himself. Just breathe. This ain’t the end of the world. “Yeah, you and me both, Chekov.”

As he forced himself to calm, Chekov seemed to become reassured that he wasn’t going to join the body on the table. “You – you knew him, sir?”

Leonard nodded. “Served under him,” he said. “Not for long, didn’t much enjoy being a field medic. I signed up to save other people, not to get shot at myself. I even met his team, once or twice.”

“So… you knew the suspect then, too?”

Leonard didn’t answer that immediately. “I knew he got his shoulder sliced open in Madrid,” he said haltingly. “If you call patching a guy up one time knowing him, then sure.” He turned his mind back to the job before him, mentally marking the areas he’d need to cut to get the autopsy _really_ underway. “But then, I guess you’d have to say that I _know_ several thousand other guys too, if that’s how you’re judging it. Seven stitches on his shoulder followed by a week’s enforced rest, and skin that scarred easily. That’s all I could tell you about Agent James Kirk.”

 

*** *** ***

 

“You two absolutely shouldn’t be here. No way.”

“And you are failing to realise that you will _need_ us if you wish to last longer than a week. You should consider this from our angle-”

“What the fuck do you _think_ I’m doing? They want me dead, they _don’t_ want you dead but if they see you in the same freakin’ continent as me you might as well go jump off a cliff right now. Everyone that’s after me, and that’s a hell of an ‘everyone’, will be told to kill you too and will do so just as willingly. You’re deserters – you’ve signed your own death warrant!”

“And do _you_ think you’re any better off? Your dumby hick ass can barely speak English fluently and you expect you’ll be able to blend in here? What, you can ask for another beer and a selection of cheap pick-up lines, you think that’ll get you by? You _need_ me.”

“And, if I may contribute, you were hardly the most subtle operative. Without me – without her – you will be found and executed for treason without a trial within the month.”

“But I-”

“If I may also correct your assumption that we are here to assist _you?_ You forget, Agent, that we also served under Captain Pike. We want to bring his killer, his _true_ killer to justice just as much as you do. Besides, to remain within the shadow of an organisation that believes me to be emotionally close to their current public enemy number one would be… illogical.”

 

*** *** ***

 

As if plane journeys didn’t suck enough already, this one had both turbulence and no alcohol. And honestly, what was the point of being a bitter old white man in private jet if he couldn’t enjoy a ridiculously expensive whiskey on the business card?

Yet, alas, the Defence Intelligence Agency was one of the few systems of government that did apparently frown on their operatives drinking while technically on duty.

Because Leonard was. On duty, that is. And on an airplane. Far, far away from the reassuring comfort of his morgue and labs.

“Christopher Pike was conducting an investigation in Italy. Do you know much about Italy, Dr McCoy?”

One of the big bosses that Leonard had never even heard the name of had summoned him to his office barely an hour after he (and presumably Chekov) had submitted the report of the autopsy, and that had been the sentence Leonard had been greeted with.

Leonard had shuffled uncomfortably in his chair. “Can’t say I do sir. Almost went there on honeymoon, but, well. Work got in the way.”

The Admiral – that was all that his secretary had called him and that was far too James Bond for Leonard’s liking – smiled at him over his steepled fingers. “Well, doctor, now your work is giving you the opportunity to finally make it there. The island of Capri, to be specific. Just off the Amalfi Coast. Very beautiful there, I’ve been told. Not been so lucky as to be able to visit, myself.”

Now, this job came with many benefits. Leonard was struggling to believe that being gifted with spontaneous holidays to one of the most expensive locations in Europe was one of them. “I’m sorry, sir, I’m not sure I understand-”

“I need someone I can trust to follow up on Captain Pike’s investigation,” The Admiral cut in, apparently finished with the pleasantries now. He slid a file to Leonard across his desk. Leonard stared it down as if waiting for the brown card to explode. “We have only a vague idea what he was looking into, and anyone who had contact with him _while_ he was investigating is currently under investigation themselves… We need a fresh eye, someone with expertise in that area. Experimental medicine. Your superiors rate you highly, as a logical man who usually makes sensible decisions and sharp observations. Do you understand now?”

Leonard still hadn’t touched the file. “Not quite, sir,” he said hesitatingly. “It’s just… I’m not a field operative, in _any_ sense, sir. My previous short foray outside my lab lasted under sixth months, I’m – I’m a _doctor_ , sir, not an agent! I’m not qualified for this!”

As he spoke, The Admiral sighed, pausing to lift his glasses from his face and pinch his nose. “Look, I’ll level with you, Dr McCoy,” he said. “We were forced to choose someone of your standard – which, yes, is less than that of a trained field agent – because currently all our spare field agents are occupied in potentially the largest manhunt of this century so far. We are facing a huge threat to national security. Compared to that, following up on Captain Pike’s last chase of a gut instinct is rather _minor_ on my list of concerns. I can’t spare any of our agents, so the duty falls to you, who, given that your record says that you greatly respected the late captain when you served under him, I thought would be grateful for the opportunity to make even a small commitment to honouring his memory. Or was I wrong?”

Leonard was good at his job. He was kind of high in the ranks. So it had been a long time since he’d last had a serious dressing-down by a superior, but he could still recognise one when hit in the face with it. “Of course, sir. Sorry, sir, I really am honoured by the opportunity.”

Content, the Admiral’s fingers locked back to their prior steeple shape, resting his chin on the meshed fingers. “Good,” he said. “You will be outfitted with a pistol, if you don’t already possess one, and you can order whatever equipment you need through your pilot who will, of course, stay in Capri with you in case of emergencies. You will also be allocated a DIA contact to provide you with a constant link to the agency. We are not expecting you to face any trouble, but if you do, call in backup and evacuate immediately, but I’m sure you were briefed with such rules the first time you entered the field. You will need to be at the airport at 0700 tomorrow for departure. Good day, Doctor McCoy. The DIA and your country thanks you for your continued contribution to its safety.”

And thus Leonard McCoy, highly qualified research medic and loudly proclaimed aviophobe, found himself on a tiny, personal jet for an eleven hour journey to become an armed investigator.

On a plane _without_ alcohol.

And _turbulence_.

And, honestly, still not quite sure what he was doing there.

The pilot’s voice echoed over the speakers, breaking Leonard out of his half-hearted attempts to pretend he was solid ground. “We’re about to commence descent, Dr McCoy. If it isn’t already in place, can I ask that you put your seatbelt on, but I promise that I will try to make this as smooth as possible for you.”

It had been hard to hide the gripping paranoia that overcame Leonard the moment he even _saw_ the damned plane, but even if his pride was slightly wounded by the pandering of the pilot, his sanity was immensely reassured by the steps the pilot was taking to make him feel safe. And, good to his word, the landing was the smoothest Leonard had experienced, only the slight jolt when the wheels hit tarmac shocking a quick, loud, curse from him. Only once the engine had stopped entirely did he release his claw-like grasp on the armrests and accept that perhaps today wasn’t the day he was going to die, after all.

The pilot was already waiting for him on the runway, smiling up at him as he came down the steps, pilot cap on at a careless angle and full uniform on in defiance of the sweltering South Italian heat. “See? We didn’t die,” he said, as if the whole situation was greatly amusing to him.

Leonard decided not to bless the man with the caustic response that was on the tip of his tongue.

“Your luggage is being sent on ahead by helicopter, but I thought-”

“Helicopter?” Leonard echoed, horrified and vaguely furious. “Where is this fucking hotel if we need to get there by _helicopter?_ ”

The pilot smiled again. “Uh, no, doctor, the hotel is easily accessible, it’s just on an island and we’re still on mainland Italy. There’s no airport on Capri, so we had to land in Naples. _However_ , I thought you might appreciate it if I radioed ahead and arranged a slightly less air-based transport. We’ll be travelling by sea. I hope that’s alright?”

Leonard grinned at him. “Boy, right now, that sounds like a goddamn miracle. What’ve you booked, speedboat? Yacht? Is it worth my putting anything in my stomach before we hit the waves?”

“Actually, I, uh, _bought_ a Prestige. That’s a type of motorized yacht, a fast one. It seemed simpler, given that we might need it again.”

Leonard considered the man next to him, quietly appraising. “And as for the crew? Or do you think you can pilot this thing?”

The man gave him a smug smile. “I’ll let that pass, Dr McCoy, as you don’t know me very well. I can drive anything.”

“Anything?”

“ _Anything_.”

That settled it, then. Grinning, Leonard offered the man his hand. “Call me Leonard,” he said pleasantly.

The man grinned back to him. “It’ll be a pleasure working with you, Leonard. My name’s Hikaru.”

 

*** *** ***

 

“I’m sending you to Hotel La Scalinatella in Capri.”

“What?”

“Italy. Do you speak much Italian?”

“I can read a menu – wait, hold on a second, where are you sending me?”

“Oh don’t worry, I’m sure most people there will speak English any way…”

“Does he have a decent enough suit to stay at such a resort?”

“Can you two _please_ involve me in this conversation? I kind of feel like I should have a say in these plans you’re making for me! Also, I feel like you should explain what the _fuck_ is going on?”

“Of course. My apologies. First, what do you remember of John Harrison?”

 

*** *** ***

 

After a long and horrifically dizzying drive around the island (and wow, that stereotype about Italian drivers really wasn’t wrong), the car finally came to a stop. Before Leonard had time to react his door was already been pulled open by Sulu, who shrugged at him as if to say _force of habit_. “Here we are then. Uh, where did I – here is your booking receipt, under Dr Len McCall. Close enough, you should be safe. Your luggage should already be inside.”

Leonard took the envelope from Hikaru, staring up the rather ostentatious front to the hotel, the name of the place in big, unmissable block letters underneath even more obvious five stars. _Hotel La Scalinatella_.

“The thinking was that this is out of the way enough that you’ll be safe, but still close enough to Capri and the two Marinas for you to investigate,” Hikaru continued, hands in pockets and leaning against the car. “Should be fine here. I’ve heard they’ve got two pools. And a gym.”

“Do they have a lab?” Leonard asked dryly. Hikaru laughed lightly, but didn’t reply. That was fine, Leonard hadn’t really thought they came as standard, even in five star hotels. That was why there should be over ten suitcases waiting in his room. “How the hell do I even _pronounce_ that?” he asked, gesturing at the name of the place. “Any idea what it even means?”

Hikaru considered the words for a minute, head tilted and eyes narrowed. “Um… ‘Hotel the’ something,” he said finally. Leonard raised an eyebrow, and Hikaru grinned. “Hell man, I don’t know, I was really quite terrible at languages. You should ask Pavel, he’ll probably know.”

Who now? “Pavel…?”

As if he’d been caught out for a white lie, Hikaru’s eyes suddenly widened and his cheeks flushed. “Uh, uh Pavel Chekov, he’s your DIA contact for the case, right?” he asked, and if this was a cartoon Leonard was pretty sure he’d be pulling at his collar and wiping huge drops of sweat from his forehead. “He’s, like, _really_ smart, he’ll probably know what that means. I was, uh, told to remind you to contact your, well, contact, as soon as possible. So-”

“You know Pavel, huh?” Leonard cut in, probably enjoying the spread of panic through his overqualified chauffeur far too much.

Hikaru stuttered. “I – well – yeah, I mean, we were – we-”

Laughing, and very much laughing _at_ him, Leonard held up a hand. “Okay, okay, chill. I get you. Shall we-?”

He pointed into the foyer, but Hikaru shook his head. “I prefer to stay with the vehicles,” he said, sounding a lot calmer now that the topic of Pavel Chekov was apparently in the past. “I have a small residence down in Marina Piccola, both by where the boat is harboured and the helicopter pad. Don’t worry, with this car, if you need me I’ll be up here before you’ve even finished asking for me.” He patted the hood of his car proudly, and Leonard barely managed to restrain himself from asking if he needed time alone with the vehicle.

“Anything else I need to know, then, before I go subject myself to pandering by goddamn serving staff?” he asked, expecting it to be a clear no and quick farewell.

Hikaru hesitated. Strange question to hesitate to, but Leonard was starting to get that the poor man could get flustered quite easily, even if he turned into goddamn Lewis Hamilton behind a wheel.  “Uh, yes, sorry, one last thing,” he said, shoving his hands back into his pockets. “The DIA has another agent currently on the Amalfi Coast, Positano. He will probably come by either this evening or tomorrow, to help you get settled in, help you with the local, type of thing. I think his name is Harrison, or something like that.” Hikaru paused, as if checking he’d said everything and the right things, before nodding once, both an affirmation and a brief farewell.

“I’ll tell Pavel you said hi,” Leonard called teasingly, only laughing louder as Hikaru started to rush into the driver’s seat to escape.

As the engine kicked into gear and the frankly beautiful car – Ferrari, any other car in Italy would simply be blasphemy – drove back down the snake-like roads, Leonard headed into the foyer of the hotel, passing the envelope back and forth between his hands and taking in as much of his surroundings as he could.

God, even the light fixtures were gold. He was really going to hate it here.

 

*** *** ***

 

Thankfully, his room wasn’t half as gilded as the rest of the hotel seemed to be. And it was on the ground floor, so he figured that was good, in case he needed to jump out of a window to escape bad guys. Or something.

Honestly he was more impressed by how the concierge hadn’t stacked all his suitcases up into a huge tower. Instead they were all discreetly and carefully lined next to one another at the foot of the king-sized bed (one luxury Leonard really wasn’t going to complain about; it had been a long day).

His first step was to discard the suitcase full of clothes in the wardrobe, and instead turn to check the instruments and equipment that he’d carefully stored in the other nine or so cases with the help of the lab techs. If he was honest to himself then the chances of him actually needing any of the equipment was next to nothing, but… call it a grounding mechanism. A taste of home.

That, and the several bottles of Southern Comfort he had stowed next to the portable centrifuge.

Second thing he did was pour himself a glass or two. Third, he finally contacted Chekov with the secure laptop the DIA had provided him with. He didn’t have a clue what he was expected to say, but the kid continued to impress by guiding Leonard through the procedure with ease.

His reaction ‘Hikaru says hi’ wasn’t as entertaining as the Hikaru’s, but Leonard still had the pleasure of hearing Chekov stumble on a pronunciation for the first time. “S-say hi to him too, thank you, doctor,” Chekov replied, doing a very good impression of seeming unfazed. “Good night, doctor.”

But it wasn’t night, not quite yet, at least. Though it had been a damned long day, it was barely evening. What it was, in fact, was dinner time.

The welcome pack on his desk said that this place had room service, but even if Leonard was willing to accept the king-sized bed, the Jacuzzi, and even the gold-rimmed toilet, he would never allow himself to be spoon-fed like a kid who couldn’t leave his room. Besides, this place had a restaurant. And this was the home of pizza, right?

He got changed into lighter linen trousers before he went out, though. The heat was already starting to get to him, and this was the temperature when the sun was going _down_. A thinner blue shirt, too. He was beginning to think he hadn’t taken the climate change into enough consideration when packing.

The restaurant wasn’t hard to find, but some well-intentioned staff members pointed him in the right direction anyway. Apparently it was that easy to tell he was American, and from there it was a small step to assuming he was an idiot for Europeans. And, predictably, at the door stood a smiling man in a suit, hands clasped in front of him, who smiled widely at Leonard as he approached.

“Doctor McCall, is it too much to hope that I might be the first to properly welcome you to the beautiful island that is Capri?” he asked, sticking his hand out.

Leonard narrowed his eyes at first his hand, and then the rest of him. “You’re not the Maître d’, are you?” he more stated than asked.

The man merely smiled pleasantly. “What gave me away?” he asked, sounding not the slightest bit annoyed.

No point beating around the bush. “Partially the pale colouring you’ve got going on, partly the strong Midwest American accent, but I’d say it’s mostly the way that while your suit does fit you very well, it’s not so well fitted that you wouldn’t be able to hide a holster under your jacket.” When no protest made itself immediately evident, Leonard continued with his assumption. “You’re Harrison, aren’t you? The Italy-based agent that’s meant to help me say _buongiorno_ to the locals.”

Looking remarkably pleased, as if Leonard had just passed a test, Harrison grinned at him, before bowing in admission. “But you,” he said, with a remarkably annoying twinkle in his eye, “can call me John.”

 

*** *** ***

 

“Now, what were you considering looking at first?”

Leonard was having a hard time getting his head around this Harrison figure. On one hand, he seemed perfectly capable, perfectly by-the-book, so much so that he had a pen in his breast pocket and a plain tie-slide over his plain blue tie. On the _other_ hand, however, he’d ordered cheap whiskey and a diablo pizza, which he was now piece by piece dissecting with his fingers, and eating in much the same way.

Small talk had been made, how America was getting on, if the weather was always this hot, pets they had as kids, just the basics. But, apparently, it was now time for business. Frowning at him as he carefully twirled his pasta around his fork, Leonard shrugged. “Well,” he said, around a mouthful of sinfully good cream of mushroom – tagliatelle? Could be tagliatelle. “Well, the notes Chekov gave me said that his credit card had last been used down in the small marina. Said he got a boat. Thought that might be a place to start? They might, I dunno, have tracers or GPS in their rental boats or something.”

Harrison nodded, tearing off another piece of cheese, chilli and pepperoni. “Sounds like a plan to me. I’ll go where you lead.”

And wasn’t that just the crux of it. “Why?” Leonard asked brusquely.

Harrison paused mid-chew. “Uh… excuse me?”

“Why are _you_ going to follow _me_ in this?” Leonard asked – well, demanded was probably more accurate, meal and beer momentarily being abandoned. “You’re a qualified agent, right? Field agent? I’m a doctor, and one who hasn’t gone off the path from his bed to his lab to the lavvy for over a year now. So why the _hell_ am I the one who’s leading this? And, for that matter,” Leonard continued before the man could jump in and _boy_ did it look like he wanted to, “why _are_ you free to tag along with me on this? I thought all available agents were on a man-hunt for Agent Kirk? Who _are_ you, Agent Harrison?”

Something about that last question had pulled the other man up short, so much so that he’d actually left his pizza entirely alone now. He was looking at Leonard in a way that could mean a hundred things, uncertainty to respect and everything in between. “I’m technically undercover,” he answered eventually, still giving Leonard his full attention. “Right now, this second, I’m technically undercover, but I can go unreachable for a few days, that’s not an issue. And Capri’s safe, for me, my cover. That’s why I’m not part of The Admiral’s man-hunt, because I’m _not_ an available agent. And as for the rest,” he said, grabbing his glass of cheap liquor again, “if the guys up on high want you to lead this, then how is little old me gonna argue with them? But I think they’re right. I think you can do this, and, hell, like you keep saying, you’re a _doctor_. And this all just looks like one big mysterious sickness to me, doctor. And this is me, asking you. Fix this.”

And he went back to pulling his pizza apart with his fingers and small-talk about the couples and business men that surrounded them.

That hadn’t quite been the pep-talk Leonard had expected. He would have quite happily swallowed the usual bullshit about ‘the DIA is what the DIA does’, all ‘we do our duty, doctor’, but… that had almost been an _answer_. Not one Leonard was quite sure he understood, but still, that wasn’t the point, was it?

He picked his cutlery back up again, scooping a wonderfully large chunk of mushroom onto his knife and into his mouth. He listened to the agent’s far-fetched theories of the lives of the people around them in silence until they became too ridiculous.

“No. A dog. They _definitely_ have a dog.”

“With shoes like that, are you kidding me? Any dog worth its salt would have those shoes turned into scraps and nothing more within a _day_.”

“Then they’ve got a well-trained dog! That’s _serious_ money, that is, that couple, you think they can’t afford to replace shoes their dog would so much as drool on?”

“Nah. No, _absolutely_ not. It’s all sham. I bet that necklace of hers is copper plated. Look.”

Leonard did. And the necklace Harrison was talking about… Leonard shook his head. “You’re a god damned moron,” he muttered, twisting more tagliatelle around his fork.

Harrison grinned at him like he’d just been paid the best compliment in the world. But even this guy couldn’t have figured Leonard out that quickly.

 

*** *** ***

 

Back in his room, Leonard checked the door, the keyhole, the balcony, the mirror, fucking _everywhere_ , before he pulled his suitcase out from where he’d previously shoved it in the wardrobe. Inside was the most haphazard pile of clothes that he could achieve without really aiming for sheer attire anarchy, but somehow he managed to find his washing bag, and the tattered old shorts he’d been using as pyjamas for the past ten years now.

They got put to the side.

Instead he reached into one of the side pockets, pulling out an old, worn, battered, bruised, and simply falling apart wallet, which by no means matched the shiny and expensive looking credit card that sat inside it. Of course it wouldn’t. The credit card belonged to the agency, not to him.

The wallet, however, _did_ match the old and faded photograph wedged into one of the pockets.

Silently, Leonard slid out the photograph and unfolded it. He tried to flatten it against his leg, but it had spent so much time folded in half and half again that it just wasn’t going to work. Instead, he pressed a thumb against the crease to hold it open, and sighed as she smiled back up at him, completely and utterly still.

He folded it back up and shoved it back in the wallet without half as much care with which he’d extracted it, chucking the wallet back into his bag. Then he fell back onto the bed, unashamedly _flopping_ against the soft mattress.

“What am I doing here, what the fuck am I doing here, what the fuck, _what the fuck, what the fuck am I doing here…”_

*** *** ***

The next morning, at the bright and early time of 9am, Leonard staggered down to catch the last of the breakfast buffet only to find that Harrison was already waiting for him in the foyer.

“You took your time getting up, lazybones,” he said, getting to his feet and sorting out his suit jacket – the same one as last night. “You ready to go?”

Leonard scowled. “I haven’t-” he began, gesturing towards the steps that led down to the restaurant, where, hopefully, a huge bucket of strong coffee was waiting for him. Instead, what he got was a roll thrown at him before he could even finish his sentence.

“I’ve got jam in my pocket,” Harrison said, effectively stopping all protests before they started by turning away. “C’mon. You can chew while I drive.”

It was tempting – _beyond_ tempting – to chuck the bread roll at the back of his head and head back down the stairs regardless. And yet, and yet…

Outside, with a valet standing patiently next to it, was a sleek, gunmetal silver car that Leonard would have sworn he’d seen before. As he stood in the doorway, feeling his now familiar brand of confused, the valet smiled and said a few polite words to Harrison before passing him the keys. “I know you’ve got a guy for transport,” Harrison called, walking around to the driver’s side, “but I thought it would be kinda stupid to call him all the way up here only to drive back to where he just was. Besides, whatever car he’s got, I’m _certain_ this is better.”

“He’s got a Ferrari,” Leonard said mutely, not quite sure of the significance of that.

“Yeah, and this is a fucking DB9,” Harrison said, grinning.

His grin faded pretty fast in face of Leonard’s blank look. “I don’t know what that means,” Leonard said honestly.

Harrison stared at him over the top of the car. Leonard just shrugged. Finally, Harrison rolled his eyes. “Just, just get in the damn car,” he muttered, yanking open the door and sliding inside. Stifling a grin, Leonard followed suit.

Aston Martin. James Bond car. That was it.

And regardless of who won the ‘my car’s bigger than your car’ argument, the roads down the hill were just as horrifying. Leonard found his nails digging into the upholstery unconsciously, much to Harrison’s joy.

“Can you please stop acting like I’m about to drive us off the cliff, I’m not about to drive us off the cliff.”

“You sure, because you’re sure driving like you’re about to drive us off the cliff.”

“I’m not! I’m being cautious!”

“This is cautious? _This_ is cautious. Good gods man, I’d hate to see you being reckless.”

“I’m never reckless, I’m always perfectly safe.”

“Bullshit, you’re taking hairpin bends at forty miles per hour.”

“Yeah, exactly, perfectly safe.”

Needless to say, not much of the journey passed in silence. Leonard blamed Harrison fully (though he remained grateful he hadn’t had time to eat that morning), though he had to admit that he was the one to initiate the name-calling.

“Oh yeah, you car-fucking hick?”

“Get out of my damn car, sawbones.”

That drew Leonard up short. “You _what_ now?”

Harrison looked across at him like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to punch him or laugh at him. “We’re here, you great buffoon,” he said, pointing out of Leonard’s window. “The harbour. So get out of my _car_ , sawbones.”

“Oh. Uh… yeah, sorry.”

The heat hit him like a sledgehammer as soon as the car door opened, and suddenly the indignity of wearing shorts didn’t seem like such an important concern. “For the record,” he said, trying not to pant like a dog to cool down, “we don’t tend to saw bones anymore. Not if we can help it.”

“Oh, because everything you called me made so much more sense,” Harrison retorted, staring at him as if the absurdity of it all personally offended him. “Just – shut up, and tell me where the hell we’re meant to be going.”

“Uh, yeah, I think it’s this way…”

For once, Google Maps didn’t let them down. The boat rental was absolutely tiny, a shack at the end of a row of far fancier business proclaiming romantic tours of Capri and the Amalfi coast, free wine and meals included. Everything from speedboats to full-sized yachts, from the space of a few hours to a couple of days, skippers optional. Leonard took a moment to wonder is the skippers came pre-oiled or if you had to pay more for that particular service.

This business, however, looked like if you hired a boat from it for long enough it would fall apart underneath you before you returned to harbour.

So… no oiled young Italian skippers then.

“I’m starting to lose faith in the whole ‘tracked boats’ idea,” Leonard muttered. Harrison pursed his lips.

The guy inside was at least clean shaven. Though he did look remarkably surprised to see people walking into his shop voluntarily. “Uhuh, can I help you, sirs?” he asked, cautiously hiding the magazine he’d been flicking through under his desk.

Unsure quite how to proceed – it was a lot easier for Leonard to get answers from dead bodies, and he doubted that approach would really go down well in this situation – he glanced across to Harrison.

Harrison took the hint.

Leaning on the desk, he flashed the guy a winning smile. “Hey, hope you’re having a good day,” he said pleasantly. “I’m afraid we’re not here for a boat right now – though we might need one later. _Capisci?_ ” The poor bloke nodded. “Anyway. A mate of mine, about so high, American, 60-ish years old, was here about a week ago to hire a boat. Can you tell me where he went?”

The owner looked like he was going to have a heart attack. He looked across to Leonard as if he might get some answers. Leonard tried to smile back as pleasantly as Harrison had, but he’d been soaking in cynicism for far too many decades at this point.

“Uh, sorry, I cannot,” the bloke said, smiling apologetically at Harrison, who was still smiling rather uncomfortably close to him. “I cannot say where he went. I do not know who you are, it is – it is confidential, yes?”

Not quite what they’d wanted to hear, but it was always a possibility. This time it was Harrison who looked at Leonard, and Leonard just shrugged. Again, he wasn’t used to trying to get answers from living people.

And yet, Harrison seemed to get some sort of answer from Leonard’s shrug. His smile shifting from beatific to something slightly less friendly, he turned back to the Italian gentleman. “Okay,” he said, pushing up from the desk and walking around to the other side, looping an arm around the shell-shocked man’s shoulders, “Okay. I get you. But, have you considered it from this point of view-”

And he slammed the guy’s head into his desk.

Leonard jumped back, yelling almost as loud as the now _really_ bad off Italian was. “What the heck was that for?” he yelled at Harrison.

Harrison looked thoroughly confused – and of all of them, what right did _he_ have to be the confused one. “You told me to!” he yelled back, hand firmly grasping the Italian’s collar as he slumped and moaned into his hands.

“Fuck off, I said no such damn thing!”

“You did, with the shrug, you-”

“The shrug was me _confused_ , you blithering idiot-”

“I – you – fucking-” Harrison waved his free hand about as if waving off the confusion like a swarm of particularly annoying flies. “Look, we don’t have time – you,” he said, shaking the Italian, “This has already got too weird, can you not just tell us what we want to know?”

“Ugh, I _cannot_!” the Italian groaned. “I do not _know_ , tu pazzo, I do not know! You hire boat, you go, you come back by the time decided and you get deposit back, that is the agreement-” Harrison moved to put his hand on the back of the Italian’s head again, and Leonard found himself yelling stop at the same time as the Italian. “No, no, stop, I know – I _do_ know the man you talk of, American, like you, yes, yes?”

“Keep talking,” Harrison said calmly, as the guy shook in his grasp.

“He – he came with someone, with someone else, a – a local, a very not nice man, I know _him_ , can give you address?”

At a gesture from Harrison, Leonard took a notepad and pen from his pocket, his eyes not leaving Harrison’s hand on the Italian’s neck. Hurriedly – understandingly so – the Italian scribbled down a quick address. “You will find him there,” he muttered. “He was with your man, but, he is not a nice man. Do not say I did not warn you.”

“Don’t worry, you won’t see us again,” Leonard said mutinously, eyes still fixed on Harrison. “Thank you.”

He figured what was coming before it happened. He grabbed Harrison’s arm, just as he moved to hit the Italian again. “We are _leaving_ now,” he hissed.

Harrison looked from the man to Leonard, staring up at him with nothing more than innocent concern. “But he could _call_ someone,” he said back.

“So what?” Leonard said furiously. “We aren’t doing anything wrong – or at least we _weren’t,_ until you beat the crap outta that guy. So set him _down_.”

Leonard wasn’t sure what surprised him more, that Harrison did as he was told, or the apologetic look he bore as he did so. “Get some ice to put on that,” he muttered, waving a hand at the bruise forming on the Italian’s forehead. It was probably the closest thing he ever gave to an apology.

“C’mon,” he said as he pushed past Leonard to get out of the hut. “Let’s go get some lunch.”

 

*** *** ***

 

Sandwiches in Capri, it turned out, came in two versions. Mozzarella and prosciutto, or mozzarella and tomatoes. If you dared to suggest to the person behind the counter that you would like ham and tomato _but no mozzarella_ , you would receive a glare such as which made you believe you belonged in the deepest darkest pits of hell so strongly that you would be willing to walk to the edge of the cliff and jump off yourself.

Leonard and Harrison worked their way around the system, however. As they perched on a wall by the harbour front, they traded tomatoes for cheese until Harrison’s sandwich was 80% mozzarella and only 20% bread. “Are you – are you sure you don’t mind?” Leonard asked suspiciously, eyeing the thick layer of cheese visible where Harrison had taken a bite.

“You kidding me?” Harrison replied around a full mouth. “This stuff is _amazing_. You ever try mozzarella state side? Fucking _sucks_ , it’s like wet plastic, but _this_ shit-” Harrison made a noise around the chewed bite of sandwich that implied he’d found heaven.

Leonard side-eyed him. Harrison remained oblivious. “Anyway,” Leonard continued loudly, pulling his notebook from his pocket, “What do you think we should do about this guy? Try the blunt approach?”

Harrison shrugged. “It works most of the time,” he said, still around a full mouth. “Where is he?”

“Still on the island, thankfully,” Leonard said, and, screw it, he took a mouthful of sandwich. “Says here ‘Anna-Capri’,” he continued. “That nearby?”

“Just up the hill, barely ten minutes’ drive away,” Harrison said. “I think the bus stop’s just that way, we can grab-”

“Whoa, _whoa_ ,” Leonard cut in desperately, holding up his hands (and sandwich). “Why the hell are we taking the _bus_ now? _You’ve_ got a car, I’ve got a guy who’s got a car, boat and a _helicopter-_ ”

“Yeah, because a boat will take us up several miles of hairpins bends. Look, just trust me, the bus will be quicker, these roads are just chaos-”

“Why can’t you just drive if you know the roads so well?”

“Hey! You were the one moaning at me for my driving not two hours ago, what’s your problem now?”

Leonard declined to answer. Instead, he finished his sandwich in bitter, vindictive silence.

 

*** *** ***

 

“You see, that,” Leonard muttered furiously as Harrison griped his elbow and dragged him off the bus and away from the poor old lady and her dog, “ _That’s_ why I hate buses. Public transport, full of grotty toddlers and dumb middle-aged morons and unhygienic and teenagers and _that_ kind of horrific display-”

“It was a dog, sawbones,” Harrison grumbled. “It just did what dogs do, I think threatening to spit roast it was too far-”

“Hey, I did no such thing-”

“Oh trust me, your facial expressions were pretty damn vocal-”

Eventually Harrison let go of his arm, and after the few seconds Leonard took to regain his pride and composure he could finally realise where he was.

“Well I’ll be damned,” he muttered, turning around. “This place ain’t half pretty.”

“I never really understood why people fuss so much about Capri town when this place exists, but everyone always ignores it,” Harrison agreed. “Yeah, you’ve got all your designers down there, but here – I dunno, maybe it’s just me, but give me something handmade and personal any day of the week.”

“If you behave yourself, perhaps we can put aside some time for shopping after we’ve finished working,” Leonard joked.

Harrison laughed. “I’ll hold you to that,” he promised with a wink.

“Actually, yeah, I bet you will. Just – where’ve we gotta go?”

“This way…”

As if it were possible, the houses got even more stunning. White paint buildings with every door they passed looking like it belonged in a fairytale, Leonard felt like he’d walked straight into something out of a Tolkien novel. _Well_ , he realised, grinning as he saw an intricately painted tree seemingly overwhelming the side of an independent art shop, _this is the Mediterranean_. This earth’s very own Middle Earth.

Shop after shop spilled forth crafts and jewels like individual cornucopias, sculptures from the size of pins to twice the size of Leonard, ceramics decorated with both the beautifully simple classically Italian style, to indescribably intricate modern patterns. Jewels made of everything to microscopic gold links to basic shaped wire, sapphires to turquoise and coral, cameos with carvings more delicate than should feasibly possible. The most delicate cloths, the most in-depth artwork. Walking through a museum wouldn’t show you so much history of craftwork and beauty as you could find here.

“What the hell was Pike doing up here,” Leonard muttered. “What kind of suspicious persons could he find _here…_ ”

Harrison pursed his lips, as if he, too, was upset by the thought. “We’re about to find out,” he muttered, shoving a thumb at the shop just behind him.

This shop was slightly less colourful than those that surrounded it, but only marginally so. The windows were filled with bottles of liquid of a huge variety of colour, but yellow seemed to dominate.

“Limoncello,” Harrison said, answering the unanswered question. “An alcohol particularly common around here. Like… lemon based vodka. Kind of. It’s quite nice, actually.”

“And the rest of that?” Leonard asked, gesturing at the fluorescent blue, the greens, the reds. “More alcohol?”

Harrison shrugged, clearly as clueless as Leonard was. “Well,” he said slyly, starting to grin again, “Why don’t we go ask?”

No one appeared when they entered the shop. Wall-to-wall bottles, each of them unlabelled, some of the glass as beautifully painted as any other piece of art in the town. But this shop was noticeably different. Every other place they’d passed had shown off, not only the wares, but how they’d been made. At the back of each shop, clearly visible, was the workstation where the stunning pieces of art were made, often with the tools used still scattered about it – or even better, with the craftsmen themselves sat in place, working.

Here? Nothing.

“This place strike you as off?”

Leonard rolled his eyes, staring into a tiny bottle on the back wall that was suspiciously copper sulphate blue. “We found this address by following up on the murder of a DIA agent and were told that they guy who lived here was ‘bad news’, I’m hardly surprised to find that this place strikes us as ‘off’,” he said, making the quotation marks with his hands and pursing his lips. “I’ll tell you what, though. I think you’d be in deep trouble if you tried drinking some of these…”

And then something smashed behind the door in the corner.

Leonard hadn’t really got around to paying it much attention before, but at that, he met Harrison’s gaze with a raised eyebrow and pointed at it.

Harrison frowned, looking between the suspicious door and Leonard. “That sound a bit too convenient to you?” he whispered, reaching under his jacket to pull his pistol from his holster.

“I mean, I’m hardly drawing upon years of field experience but I’d say that sounds like _a trap_ ,” Leonard whispered back, enunciating the words and stepping backwards.

Gun now firmly in position at his side, Harrison rolled his eyes, nodding. He gestured at Leonard to stay where he was – something that Leonard _really wasn’t_ going to argue with – before taking place next to the door.

First, as was probably in the secret agent code of conduct or something, Harrison knocked on the door. Leonard glared at him, trying to convey on how truly ridiculous such an action was. He would put everything he held dear on the bet that no one had _ever_ replied.

Shrugging, Harrison shuffled to steps to his left and with one swift move, kicked the door wide open.

Someone on the other side yelled out, something else smashed on the floor, there was scuffling and some more wordless yelling. Fully aware he was unarmed and hardly an experienced fighter, Leonard hesitantly made his way into the back room.

The first thing that struck him was the smell, because _God_ was it strong. And there, _there_ was the worktable he’d been expecting, the chemical equipment, the bottles of powders and metals and crystals and carefully labelled liquids, titrates and flasks and not a damn thing that Leonard wanted to touch without a full hazmat suit.

“D- doc? Would you – do you _mind?”_

Still back by the door, Harrison was grappling with a small, lithe man with stained hands and a terrible acid scar on his face. The thinner man’s hands were wrapped tight in Harrison’s hair, pulling his head back as the agent tried to keep a firm lock around the man’s chest. Neither man seemed to be winning, but honestly, it was only a short time before the unknown made the harsh decision that, honestly, he’d be better off by removing his assailant’s chance of having a child.

In other words, that fight was going to go south rather quickly.

Still, Leonard had priorities. “What do you expect me to do?” he asked, crossing his arms. “I’m a _doctor_. I made a vow.”

Harrison let out a wordless roar. “You’re from the _South!”_

Leonard pursed his lips in annoyance. Even so, he could see the stranger getting restless. “Okay, alright, just hold him steady, and could you just-” he gestured at Harrison to lower his grip on the man’s chest slightly. Harrison did as instructed. The stranger started to panic.

Leonard took his time, carefully lining up his arm, before stepping back, crouching, and _swinging_. His fist collided with the scarred man’s jaw at just the right angle, knocking his head back with a fierce thud.

He went out like a light. In one fluid motion, the now unconscious and persistently mysterious chemist slipped from Harrison’s grasp and landed on the floor in an undignified little bony pile.

Feeling what he felt was perfectly reasonable pride, Leonard grinned up at Harrison. Who was scowling. “What the hell?” he demanded. “That _hurt!”_

“I didn’t hit _you_!” Leonard retorted indignantly. “I hit him! Like you _wanted_ me to!”

“I was standing _behind_ him!” Harrison yelled back.

Leonard scowled. “Yeah well,” he muttered, as Harrison rubbed his jaw, wincing – something that Leonard was _absolutely_ sure was an affected gesture – “I’ll just leave him to kick you in the crown jewels next time, shall I?”

“Oh I’m sure you had the deepest concern for my ‘crown jewels’,” Harrison said vindictively. “Look, just – tell me what the fuck this all is, yeah, sawbones?”

Honestly? Leonard didn’t have a clue. He worked in a lab, with machines and systems and computers, nothing this… _raw_. Such unrefined chemistry as this was better suited to a school room, for an actual scientist to work with materials so imprecise was never seen anymore, not anywhere that could actually produce anything that _worked_. This equipment was used for parlour tricks to make teenagers think that science was damn magical, nothing else!

…Right?

“It’s weird, is what it is,” Leonard said eventually, looking over his shoulder to Harrison, not hiding his bafflement. “I don’t know what you expect me to draw from this, because I haven’t used this type of basic equipment since I was young enough to be carded in a bar. This is…”

“Illogical?” Harrison offered wryly.

Leonard shrugged. That word worked as well as anything.

“So, you’re saying we need this guy to talk?” Harrison asked, poking at the unconscious guy at his feet with the tip of his shoe. “Because,” he said, looking guilty before he even _started_ his sentence, “I’ve got a bit of an idea on how we could get him to be slightly more cooperative than he currently seems to be. Unless…” he looked pleadingly at Leonard. “Unless you’d rather we left him, like the boats guy?”

Once again, Leonard looked around the queerly outfitted room. He thought of the chemical concoctions sat out there amidst alcohol, about the tourists that came here to buy pretty things and could go home with poisons.

He thought of the dead captain he’d had to cut open two days ago.

“Y’know what,” Leonard sighed, putting his hands in his pockets and rocking on the balls of his feet, “I’m suddenly feeling rather ambivalent about the Hippocratic Oath.”

Harrison grinned.

 

*** *** ***

 

When the mysterious chemist came back round, he was tied to his desk chair, tilted forwards over the edge of a cliff, two Americans bickering behind him.

“Seriously though, how did you just magically make a cliff appear?”

“You kidding me? We’re on a fault-line, there’s a cliff in everyone’s freakin’ back-garden. Now,” an American said, shaking the chemist’s chair and _oh gods he was going to die_ , “We _were_ planning on being all nice and polite but a little _somebody_ decided to assault us, so, looks like we’re doing this the hard way. What were you doing with Christopher Pike?”

The chemist couldn’t respond. For starters, his heart, lungs, stomach and possibly intestines all seemed pressed against his throat from the angle he was dangling at. And he was struggling to breathe evenly.

“No, no, come on now, my friend here has come a long way to find out what happened to his friend.” The American was almost trying to sound reasonable. “So the silent approach really isn’t going to work for us. Please don’t make me start counting down from ten, I really don’t like sounding like a cliché Bond villain.”

Desperate, fully aware that he would be dropped if he didn’t respond (and some small part of him starting to think he’d still wind up dead on the bottom of these cliffs if he did), he tried to nod towards his breast pocket.

“What’s – what’s he doing, what’s that?”

“I _think_ your prisoner is about to vomit.”

“ _What_? Ew, no, please don’t, look, could you aim over the cliff please, I kinda need this suit right now-”

At the mention of vomit, the man holding the chair jerked back – and the feet of the chair, already perched rather precariously, slipped.

His mind deciding that he’d absolutely suffered enough today, the chemist once again fell unconscious.

Behind him, Harrison looked bemused. “Okay, now what?” he asked, looking across at Leonard.

Leonard, rather less than impressed, pursed his lips. “ _Now_ he’s fainted. Well done, genius.”

“Ah, shit.” With apparent ease Harrison pulled the chair back, gently setting it down a solid couple of meters away from the edge. “Is it worth bringing him back? Doesn’t look like we were gonna get much from him… We could check his shop out again? Most people live above them, right?”

Leonard shook his head. “I dunno, that place looked like chaos…” he frowned, thinking. “Hold on.” He ran a hand down the front of the man’s jacket, pressing, feeling for any irregularities – and found something. “Here. Help me get his jacket open, would you?”

And there, in the inside breast pocket, was a small notebook. “This was what he was doing, he wasn’t going to throw up – or at least, that wasn’t what the movement was,” Leonard corrected, thinking about the poor man’s grey complexion and almost immediate fainting. “He was trying to gesture to this.”

“So?” Harrison demanded impatiently, leaning carelessly on the unconscious man to get a better look at the notebook. “What the hell are you waiting for, a fanfare? Open it!”

Specifically taking the time to glare pointedly at Harrison first, Leonard carefully opened the book. “It’s in Italian, all of it.”

“Don’t worry, I can get that translated.”

“Oh – no, wait… _this_ isn’t,” he said, pulling out a postcard that had started to slip out from the back. Wordlessly, he passed it across to Harrison as he continued to flick through the notebook.

“Oh? Ah, huh. Nothing interesting, seems like a strangely banal message to keep in so secret a notebook though. And in English… there’s another address here, might be worth checking out?”

Leonard nodded. The back few pages of the notebook, though still in Italian, were written in the format that Leonard found familiar. “I think this is the formula for some kind of chemical compound,” he said, holding the notebook out open on the page. “How ‘bout the postcard, what does that say?”

“‘Weather’s great, wish you were here’, followed by an address which is _not_ the postal address,” Harrison read for him. “Positano - that’s just across the bay.”

“That’s tomorrow’s day trip, then,” Leonard said, turning his attention back to the formula. “In the meantime, I want to find out what this compound would do to someone.”

He got to his feet, and Harrison followed, slipping the postcard into his pocket. “You think you can do that? Or are you gonna have to send that formula back to DC?”

“I can do it here. I came prepared. Hey… what about _that_ guy?”

Harrison momentarily looked confused. “Who? Oh, _him_ ,” he realised, looking back at the chemist in the chair. “Well… I suppose someone will find him eventually.”

 

*** *** ***

 

They got back to the hotel without either crashing or Leonard finally throttling Harrison. Though, if he was being with honest with himself, he was getting really damn close.

“Y’know, usually, there’s a lot more alcohol involved before I get invited into someone’s room,” Harrison said as Leonard opened the door to his hotel room. Leonard replied with his trademark stony silence. “Just a joke, just a joke… oh, _whoa_ , you weren’t kidding, you really are prepared…”

After his momentary emotional crash last night, Leonard had proceeded to unpack all the equipment he’d brought with him. And seeing it all spread out across his room, he was willing to admit that it might be slightly excessive. “I need to figure out what that formula is, because if it’s some kind of chemical weapon then I need to hand over… all _this_ to someone far more qualified,” Leonard explained, chucking his sunglasses onto the bed and striding over to his laptop. “So that’s how I’m planning on spending the rest of my day. How about you?”

Harrison was dithering by the bed, looking surprisingly out of place. “Uh. Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Do you have anything beyond a master’s degree in a branch of chemistry or something similar?”

“Nope.”

“Then no. Best you could do is sit there and keep your mouth shut. Could send an update to HQ if you wanted.”

As Leonard had suspected, this idea hardly seemed to excite Harrison. “Eh,” he said, shoving his hands in his pockets and shrugging, “Don’t know that there’s much to say yet. Yougonna be a while with that?”

“Couple hours at least.”

Harrison grinned. “Great! Come find me when you’re done.”

He strode towards the door cheerfully, and Leonard only just remembered he had no idea where Harrison was staying. “Find you _where?_ ”

“By the pool!”

The door swung shut. Pool. Right then.

That was fine. Leonard would just sit here, by his computer, working. And not thinking of the pool. The haven of cold water in this fucking ridiculous heat. Or the probably really attractive people that would be around said pool.

That was all fine.

 

*** *** ***

 

Research, as ever, was long, onerous, slow, and with very fewresults.

Leonard didn’t even realise the room had gone dark until he finally turned the computer off. The sun had long set passed his window – that huge, double sliding door thing at the far end of his room, if that counted as a window. Where there’d been blue sky when he’d first sat down, there was now a pink haze, the barest wisp of clouds casting soft patterns over the gently darkening evening.

And in all that time he’d got jack shit in way of answers.

It was unlikely that Harrison was still by the pool, but it was worth a try. He was owed some kind of information. And, honestly, Leonard could do with a bit of fresh air. A chance to stretch his legs. That was what you were meant to do when you had a headache, when you were confused, when you just _didn’t know_ , right? Fresh air.

There were vivid signs directing you to the pool, the goddamn ‘sapphire jewel of the hotel’ at every corner, so even Leonard struggled to get lost. If not, you could always follow the trail of progressively more naked tourists. Eventually, Leonard was just following some lady who wore so much jewellery with her bikini that she looked like she’d had her skin gold-plated.

And yeah, okay. When you saw the pool, you could begin to understand why the hotel went to such lengths to advertise it. It was huge. The beautiful blue mosaics on the floor turned it the same colour as the Mediterranean ocean, and in the setting sun made it look like something painted, some ideal crafted by Monet, by Turner. And if that wasn’t enough, it was an infinity pool – the edge leading straight to an uninterrupted, perfect view of the sunset over the ocean, a view that could make someone as cynical as Leonard a pause to reconsider the possibility of a Great Designer.

 _She would love this_ , Leonard found himself thinking. _She would absolutely love this_.

Feeling he was allowed a second to forget about why he was here, allowed a moment to just enjoy himself, Leonard made his way to the edge of the pool. He kicked off his shoes, rolled up his trousers, and carefully lowered himself until he was sat on the side and his feet were submerged in the utopian water. 

Eventually he saw Harrison. The man was at the far end of the pool, leaning on the edge and watching the sunset as if nothing else existed. In the dim, syrup sunlight, his hair was indistinguishable from molten gold. And somehow – in a way that Leonard didn’t even want to try to understand – the expression on his face, the hard lines softened with something closer to pain than peace, felt like it was breaking Leonard’s heart.

It felt wrong to disturb him. But it wasn’t like Leonard had much choice. Besides, no doubt they’d be closing the pool soon anyway.

At the sound of Leonard’s voice, Harrison almost jumped back from the edge, head spinning until he spotted the man who’d called his name. Then his face split into a wide grin. With a wave, he started to swim over to where Leonard was sat.

As he got closer, Leonard could see that his skin wasn’t the perfect, unblemished surface it had seemed from a distance. Rather, there wasn’t a square inch that wasn’t marred with silvered scars. Leonard’s eyes were fixed on them as Harrison drew close.

“Ah, admiring my battle wounds?” Harrison teased, noticing Leonard’s less than subtle gaze on his skin. Laughing, he started to flex. “Yeah. I know. Make me look incredibly manly, right?”

“A veritable Adonis,” Leonard said dryly, not quite sure if he was being sarcastic or merely truthful. “You been in this pool all this time?”

Harrison shook his head, running a hand through his hair. A constellation of bullet wound scars on his forearm caught the sun, momentarily looking like silver on his skin. “Nah, I went to talk to some friends first,” Harrison confessed. “Read a bit in the sun, didn’t actually start swimming until quite late. How about you, have a nice, relaxing afternoon?”

He was grinning, fully aware of how much of a dick he was being. “Wonderfully relaxing,” Leonard countered, making Harrison laugh again. “I got the work done. That’s the important part, right?”

“Only from one perspective,” Harrison said. “But what did this oh-so important work reveal? Anything useful?”

“Hardly. This compound in his notebook, it’s… unregistered on our database, that much I am sure about. It’s similar to a few mixtures we use in bombs, so it’s probably combustible and probably _not_ consumable. That’s all I’ve got.”

“So, what you’re saying,” Harrison mused, leaning against the edge by Leonard’s thighs, “Is that you might as well have spent the day by the pool, with me?”

Leonard sighed. “Don’t remind me.”

That seemed to be exactly the answer Harrison wanted. In one fluid movement he pushed himself out of the water, a display of form, beauty and anatomy that would probably have made Praxiteles cry. “Okay,” Harrison said once he was sat next to Leonard, the scars even more prominent as the water clung to them, his hair stuck to his forehead in wet curls. “So, you look like you need a break. And I’m pretty sure that we’ll be pushing it for time if we go to the restaurant in the hotel. Luckily, I know this amazing little local place that does the most amazing pizzas. Local family recipe. How d’you fancy it? Tempted?”

Tempted? Well, now…

“Sure,” Leonard said, getting to his feet, and picking up his shoes. “How long until you’ll be ready? I’m _presuming_ you’re not going to this place half naked.”

“Fifteen minutes should do it. You gonna help me up?”

“Hell no, you’re soaking wet. Keep away from me.”

 

*** *** ***

 

The pizza was great. The conversation and the company even better.

When they got back to the hotel, Leonard didn’t even realise Harrison had followed him to his room until he’d unlocked the door. “So, I’ll see you tomorrow?” Harrison said suddenly, hands in his pocket, tie loose, cheeks ruddy from the wine they’d drunk.

Leonard couldn’t quite process what he’d said. “Tomorrow?” He shook his head. “Yeah, sorry, of course. Uh, it’s on the mainland, right?”

“Right,” Harrison confirmed. His hair was mussed, from where he kept running his hands through it. Leonard absently raised his hand to his own hair. “How about an 8am start, get us down to the harbour by half past the hour?” Harrison offered. Leonard nodded.

“I’ll concede this time,” Harrison said with a grin, backing up. “I’ll let your guy boat us across to the mainland, how ‘bout that?”

And with that he turned and left Leonard standing alone in the doorway to his room, feeling like he’d been playing poker and the other player had just called top trumps.

 

*** *** ***

 

“Man, are you a sight for sore eyes,” Leonard laughed, as Hikaru took the offered hand and shook it enthusiastically, grinning right back.

“Could say the same to you,” Hikaru replied cheerfully. “You know how hard it is to find an American out here? _Everyone_ isItalian. Even the other _tourists_ are Italian!”

“Yeah, you look like you’ve had a really rough couple of days,” Leonard said wryly. Hikaru looked very much like he’d stepped straight from an advertisement for Caprisian holidays: aviator sunglasses (which Leonard highly suspected were designer), slim-fitting ripped denim shorts, and light cotton shirt unbuttoned one too many times to be considered acceptable anywhere other than a Mediterranean holiday resort. “Kid, you have _no_ idea how reassuring it is to know you’re going to be at the wheel again.”

Hikaru raised an eyebrow. “Your partner not a very safe driver?”

Leonard was fully prepared with a more than complete list of insults about Harrison’s driving, but the man himself cut in before he could verbalise any of his less-than-pleasant thoughts. “Please, I’m an amazing driver, ‘safe’ doesn’t factor into it,” Harrison said, sounding impossibly smug.

“Perhaps ‘safe’ _should,”_ Leonard muttered. No one listened.

“Good to see you again, Mr Sulu.”

Hikaru took Harrison’s hand, shaking it with almost as much energy as he’d shook Leonard’s. “Good to be working with you again, sir,” he said back, with a small smile. But his eyes were shining. “We’ve got an opening to get out of the harbour soon, so we’d better move. Just follow me. And, if you could please behave until we get out into open waters, I’d greatly appreciate it…”

The motorised yacht was just as shiny and sleek as Leonard remembered. And, even better, the cooler with beer was in the exact same place. As Hikaru took his place by the controls Leonard made a beeline for the icebox, nudging the lid off with a toe and reaching for a Peroni.

He’d taken a swig before he realised that Harrison was dithering at the back of the boat, only sign of movement the hand grasping the rail as the boat started to move out of port. “What’re you waiting for, take a seat,” Leonard said, gesturing at the seat opposite.

Harrison stared at him like he was nuts. “A beautiful thing like this?” he sighed, shaking his head. “Amateur. You _gotta_ sit on the front of this thing.”

“ _Front?”_ And yet, apparently _Leonard_ was the insane one of the two. “You’re joking. Remember the conversation we just said, about safety?”

“Aw, c’mon, where’s your sense of fun-”

“About six feet below my sense of self preservation. With wind like this we’ll get thrown off and get hit by the stern of this thing-”

Hikaru’s noise of disbelief cut into his rant. “Please, have a _little_ faith in me.”

Fully aware he now had the numbers advantage, Harrison gestured at Hikaru’s back. “Y’see? C’mon, Bones. Live a little.” He stuck out a hand to pull Leonard up and onto the walkway that led around to the front of the boat.

Leonard eyes the hand warily, but he could feel his resolve crumbling the longer that Harrison smiled at him with a look that could only promise good things.

He took the hand. Harrison whooped, punching the air. “Yes! C’mon, we gotta get settled down before we hit the open ocean or we’ll get thrown off for _sure._ ”

“ _Faith_ , fellas,” Hikaru teased, echoing his earlier sentiment. “Just a little bit of faith, all I ask.”

Harrison laughed again, but Leonard was too focused on not falling over the side. The pathway to the stern of the boat was so slim, just wider than his feet, but with one hand holding tightly onto the railing and Harrison grasping the other, guiding him, he made it without much trouble.

He shimmied awkwardly onto the hard plastic surface – a slightly sloped one at that – besides Harrison. “See?” Harrison asked. “Ain’t this so much better? You get the breeze, the sun, the sea spray – and Hikaru, we need music, my man!”

“Aye aye, captain!” came the call from the cabin, before some hit song Leonard vaguely recognised started to play over speakers he hadn’t known exist.

Harrison whooped like a goddamn college kid. He stole Leonard’s beer, taking a swig as Hikaru hit the accelerator.

And _wow_ , wasn’t that a rush.

“See, isn’t this so much better, Bones? You should do exactly what I say, _all_ of the time,” Harrison said, giving Leonard his drink back with a wink. “Don’t even question it.”

Leonard considered him, not taking his eyes off him as he took his beer back. “What happened to the saw?”

Harrison opened his eyes again, lifting his head up and turning to look at Leonard with a confusion even his thick-rimmed sunglasses couldn’t hide. “What?”

“You’ve dropped the ‘saw’ from ‘sawbones’,” Leonard pointed out, before taking a sip of beer.

“Oh,” Harrison said, realising. “Well, y’know,” he said with a shrug, “it was a bit of a mouthful. And besides, you said you don’t use saws anymore.”

“I don’t do anything with bones either,” Leonard corrected. “I’m a research medic, I work with experimental medicines, the occasional autopsy. Not really what your old medieval types would call a ‘sawbones’-”

“Oh, shut up,” Harrison muttered, closing his eyes and resting his head back against the cabin’s front. “I’ve got to call you something, and ‘research medic’ doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.”

Leonard didn’t contract that. Instead, he drank more of his beer, sat back, enjoyed the view. It was definitely better here than it was in the back. That, the sun, the music, and the occasional splashes of water – not to mention the adrenaline rush every time the boat hit the crest of a wave – made the whole ride a whole lot better than the last time he’d been on this thing. “Yeah, okay,” he said softly, lying back down beside Harrison. “You might have been right about this.”

Next to him, Harrison’s lips twitched into a smile. “You know it, Bones.”

 

*** *** ***

 

The port at Positano was far more chaotic than that at Capri. “It’ll take me a while to be able to get to port to pick you up,” Hikaru said, carefully steering them to the end of the walkway that effectively worked as a taxi rank for all the boats dropping off tourists. “So you’ll need to give me at least fifteen minutes warning before you want collecting. And we won’t have much time when we _do_ reach the pier, so you might want to get ready to jump.”

Harrison nodded, nimbly climbing to the back of the boat. Leonard moved more carefully and a hell of a lot slower.

“Hey, mind if I ask you something?” he asked Hikaru in a low voice, keeping an eye on where Harrison, a few meters away, was checking he had everything in his backpack.

“Yeah, sure. Better be quick though, the locals will get pissed if we linger too long.”

“You’ve worked with him before, right?”

Hikaru looked momentarily confused. “Who, Harrison _?_ ”

Leonard nodded. “Just – what’s he like? I dunno, I’m struggling to get a read on the guy.”

Hikaru glanced across to where the man currently under discussion was, whether intentionally or not, posing at the edge of the boat like a male model. “He’s not like most DIA agents, I’ll give you that,” he said wryly. “But he’s a good man. I promise you that much. You can trust him.”

Theoretically, that should be reassuring. But as Leonard followed Harrison off the boat, the man talking apparently randomly about the history of the town and as Hikaru pulled off with a final wave, Leonard found himself, if it was even possible, even more confused about the man than he had been before.

It turned out, obviously, that the address they’d been given was for a house right at the top of the hill. Because, of course, every goddamn town in this place had to be built on a hill that was steeper than the fucking Empire State building.

“We could always-”

“We not borrowing, renting, or _buying_ another fucking car. Absolutely not.”

“Aw, c’mon-”

“No.”

So here he was, sweating his fucking _skin_ off as he fucking _mountain climbed_ up the slopes of what was advertised as a high-quality tourist destination and not a military expedition, while a few meters ahead of him Harrison was all but skipping up the path.

Unsurprisingly, about halfway there Leonard decided that they were going to have a break. “So,” he said, coming to a decisive halt and leaning against a wall, pressing a hand to his chest to check for the heart attack he was sure was imminent, “What are you expecting to find?”

“Answers,” Harrison replied enigmatically.

Leonard rolled his eyes.

Apparently accepting Leonard’s decision that they were stopping, Harrison ambled back down to him. “Honestly? I have no fucking clue,” Harrison said, hands in the pocket of his suit trousers. Smart bastard had gone with a dark blue shirt – if he had sweat patches you couldn’t see them. Made Leonard in his baggy shorts and sweat-soaked cream linen shirt feel like a piss-poor excuse for a man.

“Take an educated guess,” Leonard prompted caustically. Somehow he tried to convey _we’re not moving for about ten minutes while I get my breath back so you might as well make a guess_.

Harrison grinned, as if he understood perfectly. “Okay, I’ll speculate,” he said, mimicking Leonard by leaning against the wall. “Probably someone shady. If this whole thing was worthy of Pike’s attention, then probably not really people we want to be charging in to. Maybe it was drug dealing. Maybe weapons crafting. I don’t know, that’s _your_ side. But as for the kind of people that’d use something suspicious and combustible? They’re not gonna be nice, they’re not going to be American, and they’re not going to take kindly to us asking questions.”

He rounded off his optimistic prediction with a shrug. Leonard thought for a second, then nodded. “Great. Perhaps we should have brought a gift, bottle of wine.”

Harrison laughed, the full, heavy laugh of someone genuinely surprised. “Nice thinking, Bones, but I don’t think there’s much we could do to enamour them to us,” he said, patting Leonard in a way that could be condescending or comforting. “C’mon, final push. Let’s go.”

“First remind me why we’re risking our lives by pissing off potential chemical weapon dealers,” Leonard groaned, pressing harder against the support of the wall as if doing so would super-boost his energy.

Harrison shrugged again. “Because someone died and we might be able to prevent other people from doing so.”

Once again, Leonard found himself surprised by the blunt honesty Harrison willingly provided. “I would have been fine with ‘because you’re getting paid to do so’,” he replied wryly, and Harrison grinned at him. Leonard stuck out a hand, and Harrison helped him get off the walk. “Okay. Final push.”

Leonard wasn’t quite clear if the final pathway, the final slope, really was much harder than the rest of the walk, or if that was just the thought of very angry, very bad men waiting with guns, knives and chemicals weapons that was pushing him back down the hill to the harbour where Hikaru was waiting with a very _safe_ boat.

His thoughts were overflowing with the various kinds of stereotypical villains that could be preparing to kill him, everything from _Team America_ terrorists to SAS-esque mercenaries. The thoughts didn’t get any easier to dismiss with logic when they finally found the house; a building on the very edge of the town that could very easily fit the description of ‘run down’ and not-so proudly bearing a sign that looked like it could say ‘to rent’ in Italian.

“This doesn’t look promising,” Leonard muttered. The look Harrison shot him only highlighted how stupid a comment that was.

Leonard hung back, muscles tense, as Harrison, going against _everything_ that Leonard’s sense of self-preservation was screaming at him, knocked on the door.

Footsteps, a twitch of the curtain, and a few seconds later the door swung wide open. A short man with a cheery, chubby face, asked them with a Scottish accent, “Err, yes? Can I help you gentlemen at all?”

Leonard had been prepared to fight. He had absolutely been prepared to run away.

But _this_?

Harrison didn’t even look like he was trying to hide how stunned he was. “Um… we’ve just come from Capri,” he said hesitantly.

“Oh aye?” the Scottish man said, looking interested. “From Keenser, yes?”

Harrison glanced at Leonard, clearly well beyond merely ‘confused’ now. “Uh, yeah,” Leonard cut in, pulling the ‘borrowed’ notebook from his pocket. “It’s about this… mind if we come in?”

Not at all appearing fazed by the situation, the scot nodded, opening the door wider and letting them in. “Name’s Montgomery Scott – no jokes, please, and I beg you, don’t call me by my first name, only my mum does that – and you are…?”

“Uh, Len.”

“John.”

“Well, Len, John, I’m afraid I can’t offer you much in the way of hospitality,” Scott said, wafting a hand at the chairs in what Leonard presumed was an invitation to take a seat, “Funding’s running pretty low, see. I could probably get you a cuppa, if you wanted?”

“No, I think we’re good thanks,” Leonard muttered, gingerly sinking down into an armchair so soft that it almost swallowed him whole. Harrison opted for a slightly safer wooden chair.

“Alright, suit yourselves,” Scott muttered, as if the rejection of tea was a personal offence. “Now,” he said, the word almost indecipherable through his accent, “What was it Keenser sent you here after? He’s not getting low on materials _already_ , is he?”

Leonard shook his head, but didn’t say anything. He left this for Harrison to try and navigate his way around.

“Well, you see, we’re looking for a friend of ours,” Harrison started carefully, but Scott seemed completely oblivious to the awkwardness radiating from the two men before him. “We don’t know where he went. We found that he’d visited Keenser, who in turn told us that he’d sent him to you.”

Scott nodded, sipping his drink – which smelled distinctly more alcoholic than tea usually did – and nodded. “Keenser told you this, did he?” he said, nothing in his voice suggesting it was anything more than an innocent question.

Hoping they were radiating similar airs of innocence, Leonard and Harrison nodded.

“ _Told_ you, yes?”

“Uh – yes, yes sir, he did.”

Scott had another sip of drink, eyes getting distinctly less innocent and more narrowed with suspicion as he did so. “Keenser, of course – let me just check here – dark skinned, _really_ short, wiry fellow?”

“Yes, that sounds like him.”

Scott nodded, setting his mug down carefully. “See, here’s the thing kid,” Scott said, leaning back and looking at Harrison with a curious expression, “Keenser’s mute.”

Leonard saw a look of shocked horror cross Harrison’s face as a similar emotion swept through him. They’d hung him over a cliff to get him to _talk_ … “Mute?” Harrison echoed, voice hollow.

“Aye,” Scott confirmed, crossing his arms. “Not only that, but he expressly promised me he’d never give anyone my address again unless given a bloody good reason. Don’t worry, though I think I know who you are,” he added quickly, as Harrison started to move. “Calm down, lad, I’m not the threat you seem to think I am. You’re American agents, right? Along with that other man, Christopher something?”

Leonard didn’t know what to do. The man seemed nice enough, but he’d seen enough TV dramas to know that the bad guy didn’t have to be evil from the start. Nervous, he looked across to Harrison – and when the man calmly nodded back to him, full of reassurance, Leonard forced himself to breathe again.

“Yeah, we are,” Harrison said. “Defence Intelligence Agency, and as a fact it’s Christopher Pike we’re asking about.”

“Pike, that was it,” Scott muttered to himself. “What, is he missing now?”

“Dead,” Leonard corrected.

Perhaps he should have been slightly kinder about it. At hearing the sad news, Scott winced with what appeared to be genuine sorrow. “Oh, I’m really am sorry, I did like him,” he said gently. “He seemed like a good man. In that case I perfectly understand, and I feel more than safe telling you exactly what I told him. The case he was following, that he believed to be a threat, is nothing more than a British Military Intelligence research station. We’re working with Keenser to develop a new, more environmentally and economically friendly fuel for our combustion engines for – well, for pretty much everything, really. Keenser’s unconventional, but he’s a goddamn genius. And me, I’m just a mechanical and electrical engineer with the MOD.” He smiled sadly. “I’m sorry, lads, but that’s all it is. If your friend died, then I’m afraid it had nothing to do with what we’re doing here. Nothing dangerous out here at all.”

And that was it.

It felt like he was watching it all from a distance. The huge lead up, only to realise that it was all nothing, really. Leonard was done. He could… go home. It wasn’t sinking in. He didn’t understand it all, not really. How could he? It was meant to lead to more than this. That was what he’d been led to believe. That was what he had _thought_ , anyway. That there was more to it all than just this. Than just a British intelligence agent doing research in a slightly warmer setting than his own home country.

It felt… anti-climactic.

Opposite him, Harrison was having a similar revelation. Only he didn’t seem to be taking it so well. “That’s, that _can’t_ be it,” he muttered, shaking his head, not looking at Scott, looking everywhere else, as if he could be given a better answer by looking at the floor, the ceiling, the almost empty kitchen and living space. The only things around other than furniture and mugs were books and dissembled electrical circuits, which only served to provide proof to Scott’s version of events. “There’s _got_ to be more. You, why are you here? You said you’re just an engineer for the MOD, why are you living all the way out here?”

If Scott was offended or confused by Harrison’s accusations he didn’t show it. “Ah, well, that’s kind of my fault really,” he explained, wincing. “My, uh, colleagues and superiors decided it might be better for me to be out of the office for a while after I exploded the boss’s Beagle-”

“You exploded his _dog?_ ” Leonard cut in, unable to stop himself because – _really_?

“His d- no! Oh no no, not his _dog!_ ” Scott said, sounding horrified at the very suggestion. “Hell no, no – _Bedford Beagle_ , it’s this really, really old car, I thought it’d be perfect to test out some new vehicular upgrades I’d been working on. Turns out they weren’t quite stable, yet. Though, honestly, I think that’s partly due to the decrepit state of the car than my equipment, no matter _what_ that bastard McLellan says-”

Harrison got to his feet so quickly and so violently that the stool he was sat on went flying backwards. He was staring down at the Scotsman with a rage unlike anything Leonard had seen before. Scott yelped, leaning back into his chair to try and get away from him, but Leonard had been expecting something of the sort.

He got to his own feet just as quickly, and had a hand on Harrison’s shoulder before the man could take a step forwards. “Hey,” he said calmly. When that got no reaction, he tried again. “ _John!_ ”

For a moment it looked like Harrison was still going to ignore him. But then he relaxed, leaning ever so slightly against Leonard’s hand. He sighed out, suddenly looking so tired as he looked over to Leonard. “I’m sorry,” he muttered, reaching up to rub his eyes.

Scott looked concerned. He made an aborted motion, as if to stand up and comfort the stranger in front of him himself. “Are you okay?” he asked Harrison, once again sounding completely genuine. “I’m sorry if I said anything – are you sure I can’t help you with anything else?”

Leonard didn’t look away from Harrison, scared to take his attention from him for a second. “He’s okay,” he said. “It’s nothing to do with you. Mr Scott, it’s been nice to meet you, and I really thank you for your help, and if it’s not too much of an imposition, I’d like to call you later for a statement – I, uh, I’ve got your number in Keenser’s journal. Which, I will, of course, give back to him.”

Scott waved a hand. “Ah, it’s fine, lad, call me whenever you need anything. I’d be happy to help.”

Leonard smiled gratefully at him. “But now,” he said, lightly squeezing John’s arm, “I guess we’d better be heading back.”

 

*** *** ***

 

Harrison was quiet all the way back to the hotel.

He wasn’t… sad. At least, Leonard didn’t think so. Nor did he seem angry anymore. Just quiet.

Hikaru had questions, obviously, and Leonard answered him the best he could. But he could barely explain what they’d discovered any more than he could explain what was going through Harrison’s head. Sure, he could relay what they’d _heard_ , what they’d _learnt –_ but as for what was going on? Leonard didn’t think he had a clue anymore.

But he was going home tomorrow. Back to his lab. That was good, right?

That had to be good.

Harrison didn’t say more than five words together until they got back to the hotel, even then only to ask about dinner.

Leonard would be the first to admit that he was hardly a people person, but even he could see that to leave Harrison alone right now wouldn’t be the smart option. “I got a bottle of Southern Comfort in my room,” he said, “And I’m pretty sure there’s a few glasses and some ice. Fancy sharing a glass or two?”

“Yeah,” Harrison said softly, smiling. “Yeah, you know what? That actually sounds like a damn good idea.”

The Harrison that followed Leonard to his room then was far removed from the loud, confident man that Leonard had been trailing after the last few days. Even when Leonard held the door open for him he hesitated before entering with a smile and a thank you.

“No problem,” Leonard muttered, moving to where he’d stored his emergency bottle of alcohol. “Drinking alone is damn depressing, anyway. Take a seat, if you hover you’re gonna make me more anxious then I already am.”

He poured the two glasses – rather liberally – and passed one across to Harrison, now sat on the one chair by the desk. Leonard leant against the wall, too full of nervous energy to sit still. “You’re anxious?” Harrison asked, with a wry smile as he took a drink.

Leonard snorted, taking a swig. “Hell, I’m always anxious. But… call it undirected stress. Been fussing over this thing for near week now, all that tension building, and nowhere for it to go. All a bust.” He frowned, swirling his drink. “I don’t know, I just – I felt like there was something more going on. Something I missed. Or is that just my inexperience leading me to be paranoid?”

Harrison smiled around a full mouth, clearly having to hold back laughter as he swallowed. “No,” he said, clearly amused, shaking his head. “No, you’re not being paranoid. There’s _always_ something more going on. Here, though?” he sighed, passing his glass back and forth. “Apparently there’s not. If this is a cover-up, it’s remarkably thorough. And original – I’ve never known the Scottish to be used as a misdirection before.”

At that, Leonard had to grin. “Yeah, you’re not lying. That Mr Montgomery Scott was _definitely_ a surprise.”

“We’ve got to give the diary back to his partner-”

Leonard shook his head. “Don’t worry yourself about it. I gave the diary to Hikaru, with directions. I felt like we could do with a rest. And a drink.”

Harrison frowned. “When did you do that?”

“On the boat.” Leonard took another slow sip, eyes fixed on Harrison. “You were really out of it, huh?”

A sharp, unnerving contrast to the witty, mouthy agent Leonard had been getting used to, Harrison just shrugged.

Distantly, Leonard remembered some bullshit a therapist had told him once. About talking through your problems, or something. Either way, you could never accuse Leonard of not being curious. “Hey, look, if you don’t mind,” Leonard said hesitantly, pausing until he got a response from Harrison, a nod, permission – “Why are you so bothered by all this? Why is this getting to you so much?”

For a moment, as Harrison stared blankly at him, Leonard thought that for the first time he was going to see Harrison lie. Because he’d realised, he’d not seen him lie, not yet. Everything he said – even to the locals, to Keenser, to Scott – had only ever been a lie by omission.

But as he watched Harrison shook his head, a gesture so minute it could only have been for himself alone, and downed the last of his drink. “I knew Pike well,” Harrison explained, the way he spoke belying that there was a lot more to it than that. “I served under him a _lot_ , got to know him quite well. He was a really, really good man, and I thought – I thought, that if he was all the way out _here_ , looking at something – if he was digging into something, then it’d have to be – for him to die, it’d have to be something really-”

“Something really big, I get you,” Leonard finished for him. Harrison nodded, grateful. “But this,” Leonard began, but paused. He wasn’t sure if he should… “But this was never about his death, that’s all sorted. I did the autopsy myself. That’s not what this was about.”

Harrison laughed, the sound bitter, painful. “Yeah,” he said darkly. “I guess I just thought I could get more evidence.”

Leonard didn’t know how to reply to that. Instead, he drank. He found it filled a lot of silences.

“Hey, d’you mind if I-?” Harrison eventually asked, holding his empty glass up in question.

“Knock yourself out.”

As Harrison stood up, Leonard turned to look at his room. He hadn’t unpacked much – hadn’t had the time. Clothes were pretty much still in a pile on his suitcase. It was the technical equipment that was going to cause the issue. He’s got most of it out to analyse the compounds found in Keenser’s lab, and while he’d cleaned up after himself (and wouldn’t his mother be proud), it was still all over the place. Hikaru said they could leave any time tomorrow morning, which meant he’d be packing most the night. At least then he’d be able to take a heavy tranquilizer and sleep through most of the flight.

When he turned back, Harrison was standing less than a meter from him. A normal response would be to ask what he wanted. Perhaps to step back.

Leonard couldn’t move, couldn’t say a word. He stayed perfectly still as Harrison took the glass from his hand and set it on the table beside his own. Didn’t move, as Harrison stepped towards him and gently placed a hand on the back of his neck. Didn’t move as Harrison softly pressed their lips together.

After what must have been no more than a couple of seconds, Harrison pulled back, fingers still touching the nape of Leonard’s neck. “Unless,” he said, quiet, staring at Leonard as if he could find every answer he’d ever needed in his gaze, “unless I’ve read this wrong?”

Leonard closed the gap between them, initiating their second kiss with his hands on Harrison’s hips. “Not from where I’m standing.”

They kissed again, and it wasn’t clear who’d started it this time. Harrison’s lips parted, barely, but Leonard took the opportunity, running his tongue under his top lip, his teeth, the underside of his tongue.

“You’re going to be gone tomorrow,” Harrison muttered after he pulled back. Leonard could feel the words brushing over his skin as Harrison breathed them out.

“Is that meant to be a problem?” Leonard asked quietly, too breathless, too stunned to be truly amused by the statement. Harrison laughed, soft and warm, chest pressing against Leonard’s and exposing his neck. “I thought that was the point,” he muttered into the crescent of Harrison’s collarbone. “Last night in the field, the rush of endorphins, leftover adrenaline…”

“You seem very well-informed in these things,” Harrison said, equally breathless. His fingers were threading through Leonard’s hair, slowly tightening, pulling. Leonard was starting to think he’d made a very good decision.

He let his teeth trailing lightly up the side of Harrison’s neck, reaching his earlobe. “Now, I wouldn’t want to _boast_ ,” he whispered, lightly tugging his ear. Harrison’s other hand spasmed, fingers digging into the flesh of Leonard’s thigh. “But I have some experience.”

He kissed him again – or Harrison kissed _him_ , he was starting to lose track of such insignificant things. There was none of the gentle testing of before. This was hot, wet, biting. Leonard took Harrison’s lower lip between his teeth, held it and sucked, revelling in the small gasp it caused.

He needed Harrison out of his clothes about five minutes ago.

Palms pressed against Harrison’s heaving chest he pushed him back. “Bed,” he said stiffly, fingers going to the hem of his own shirt.

Harrison raised an eyebrow but did as he was told, wicked grin back in place. “Don’t I get to undress you?” he asked, starting to unbutton his shirt.

“I thought we’d go for speed, heavier on the fucking and less focus on the foreplay,” Leonard said as calmly as he was able, pulling his shirt off in one smooth motion. He wasn’t unaware of how well-built he was, but to see someone’s eyes – _Harrison’s_ eyes – fixed on his chest was far from an unpleasant sensation. “Unless I’m reading this wrong?”

Harrison raised an eyebrow, carefully slipping off his dark blue shirt, the one Leonard had spent most of the day admiring. “Cheeky,” he said. “But I don’t think I’m going to complain. Could do with a bit more physical contact though. This? Bordering on a… seven out of ten, so far.”

Discarding the shirt still balled up in his hands, Leonard growled, stepping forwards to forcibly shove Harrison onto the bed. “Now who’s being cheeky?” he hissed, leaning over the younger man, twisting his fingers into his hair and tugging his head back before kissing him with more force than he’d kissed anyone in – well, a while.

Harrison pulled him down, fingers curling under his belt and Leonard was falling on top of him, the impact and the contact making him gasp and this time it was Harrison’s teeth on his lips. Someone’s fingers untied his belt, unbuttoned his trousers and he couldn’t have told you whose - both sets of trousers hit the floor, boxers after that.

Leonard was half prepared for another smart comment, stared down at Harrison to dare him. Instead a warm, sweat-slick hand wrapped around his cock and Leonard’s lost focus, lost any trace of thought other than how _good_ this felt. The naked body beneath him, the soft, breathless laughter, the chest under his hands and the hand around his cock and – _god_.

“D’you have, or are we gonna have to settle for-”

“No, no, I got-”

Awkwardly, reluctantly, Leonard pushed himself away from Harrison’s body enough to lean over the edge of the bed to grab a packet of condoms and lube from his open suitcase. Light fingers traced patterns down the v of his hips, over his balls, brushing across the skin with just enough rough pressure to be distracting.

“Y’know, you keep that up and I’m not gonna be able to find anything-”

Harrison just laughed at him.

Leonard dropped the packets by Harrison’s head, desperate to have his hands back on hot skin. He gripped Harrison’s side harder enough to leave a bruise but if Harrison had a problem with that, he didn’t speak up. Leonard pressed his lips against Harrison’s collar bone again, loving the way it felt under his teeth, loving the way that Harrison arched up from the bed whenever he bit him there. He moved down, curious, tasting the litany of scars that covered the skin. He ran his tongue over the smooth skin until he knew the texture of it by heart. He kept exploring with his teeth, fingers and tongue until he caught one of Harrison’s nipples between his teeth. The gasp that followed forced him to remember there was an end game here.

He let the fierce grip Harrison had on his hair pull him up. He watched as Harrison, never breaking eye contact with him, tore open one of the condom packets open with his teeth. Risky – but, god, wasn’t that just what Harrison was?

“You, yeah?” Harrison asked, having to release his twisted grip in Leonard’s hair to unroll the condom. All Leonard could do was nod.

As the same dextrous fingers that had being keeping him on edge slowly, teasingly rolled the condom down his length, Leonard took Harrison’s mouth in his again, kissing him with a desperation like a man drowning. “My turn,” he breathed into Harrison’s mouth.

He was less careful with the packet of lube than Harrison had been with the condom, ripping it open and covering his fingers. He left a wet trail down Harrison’s abdomen, stroking his cock once before sliding past, rubbing his perineum before slipping down between his ass cheeks. Finding the hole, he circled it, pushing lightly. Beneath him, trapped by his chest Harrison writhed, eyes screwed shut and mouth open but no sound coming out.

The first finger went in easily.

Leonard kissed him again, the feeling of breathing in what Harrison was breathing out so addictive as he pushed at the tight wall of Harrison’s arse. Harrison almost bit his lip hard enough to draw blood when he found his prostate.

The second finger went in without much more effort. The burn from the stretch made Harrison arch off the bed enough press their chests together. Leonard could feel his heartbeat over his own, both of them so fast that distinguishing individual beats was near impossible. Third finger made Harrison gasp into Leonard’s mouth.

“C’mon,” Harrison breathed harshly, nails digging into Leonard’s waist. If he held on any tighter he’d break the skin. “C’mon, Bones – what’re you waiting for?”

The use of the nickname made something click in Leonard that he hadn’t known existed. With a growl he pulled his fingers free, ignoring the sudden gasp of shock from Harrison and grabbed him to bodily flip him onto his front. One hand around his waist, the other pressing along the white lines of scars across his back, Leonard waited for the nod of permission before pulling Harrison’s cheeks apart, and finally – _oh god, finally_ – pushing in.

It didn’t last long after that. They were too wired, too stressed, too desperate for anything other than the hard and fast fuck it ended up being. Leonard reached under to take Harrison’s cock in hand, matching his strokes with his thrusts, until all he could think was Harrison’s name, mouth stuttering over the first syllable of his first name. John came first, coating the bed and Leonard’s hand – with a cry Leonard followed, lips pressed to the beautifully marred skin of John Harrison’s back.

It was a few minutes before either of them could move to clean up. It didn’t take long, the duvet discarded for the blanket the hotel had provided, a warm flannel dealing with the rest until all that was left was Harrison searching for his clothes.

“You don’t have to leave,” Leonard said, not sure what prompted him to speak. But at the look of severe, heart-wrenching gratitude Harrison gave him he was glad he did.

Harrison dropped the shirt he’d managed to find and in two steps was in front of Leonard again. “Thank you,” he said, and kissed him again. But this – this was soft. This was a hand carefully holding Leonard’s face, a press of lips that meant more than just the hope of a good fuck later.

And Leonard… Leonard let it pass without comment.

It felt almost too natural, having this man lie beside him. Harrison, it turned out, slept on his front, on the left side of the bed. Leonard had always been happier on the right, anyway. And with the curtains still wide open and the moonlight illuminating the patterns of scars that so intrigued him, Leonard was quite happy to watch him until he, too, fell asleep.

And it was in watching the man that he’d just fucked that he saw one small, barely noticeable scar on his shoulder blade, expertly mended, and remembered the young, idealistic blonde agent that he’d fixed up not two years ago.

 

*** *** ***

 

James Kirk finally started to stir at around four in the morning. The sky outside was just starting to brighten, and apparently it was this that drew Kirk from whatever black oblivion he’d been enjoying.

Leonard watched him as he started to move, as he lifted a hand to shade from the faint light, as he looked around the room. He himself didn’t move, didn’t speak until Kirk made to get out of the bed. “Please don’t.”

Even to Leonard, his voice sounded tired. He stared impassively back at Kirk as the man searched him out in the shadows. Leonard let him take in the sight of him, already fully dressed, leaning against the wall, gun clenched in one hand and bottle of whiskey in the other. “I’ve never used of these outside a gun range before,” Leonard said, some humour still there as he casually lifted up the gun, “but I’ve been given strict orders to use it if you try and escape.”

Kirk understood after that, apparently. And, once again going against what Leonard had expected, he didn’t try to leave the bed. Instead, he just nodded. “How long have you known?” he asked.

“Only a couple of hours.” With a heavy reluctance, Leonard set the bottle of whiskey down on the desk beside him. “After… when you were sleeping, I saw a scar, on your shoulder. I was the one who stitched that wound, just over two years ago now.”

There was no surprise, no annoyance from Kirk. Instead he just nodded with the same sad resignation as he had seconds ago.

The rage that Leonard hadn’t quite been able to escape for the past five hours came surging back as he realised – “You _knew?”_ he yelled, stepping forwards and feeling a hot rush of bitter joy as Kirk winced. “You fucking _knew_ who I was?”

“From the very start,” Kirk confessed, and if it didn’t contradict everything Leonard felt and believed he’d even say that Kirk looked apologetic. “I remembered you, remembered your name. That’s how I knew I could work with you – knew I could _trust_ you.”

Leonard laughed, a short, bitter sound that made Kirk flinch. “Trust? Jesus _Christ_ …”

“I – look, I didn’t want to-”

“To _what_?” Leonard yelled, face contorting painfully. Gods, he’d drunk too much. Or nowhere near enough. “To _use_ me? Because that was damn well your intent from the start. Or perhaps you meant you didn’t want to fuck me over? Or even just _fuck_ me?”

Kirk didn’t answer that one. He couldn’t even meet Leonard’s eyes, _Christ_.

“What happened to John Harrison? The guys who I was _supposed_ to meet, is he even still alive?” Leonard spat. “Or have you killed him, too?”

That got a response. Suddenly furious, Kirk snapped his head up. “Don’t you _dare_ ,” he hissed. “How can you think I killed anyone?”

Struck by a dark irony, Leonard laughed. “I don’t know what to fucking think right now,” he admitted wryly. “So I sure as fuck could believe you went on a goddamn murder spree if someone suggested it.”

Kirk stared at him. Leonard stared right back. “John Harrison doesn’t exist,” Kirk confessed eventually, with a quiet voice. “It’s an empty profile, an open cover available to any agent, at any time. He’s a fictional construction by the DIA. I’ve used it before, I used it again in the hope that I could tag along and find some evidence to prove that I _haven’t killed anyone_.”

So that was why. That was why he’d done it, and it was good to know, it was – but Leonard could barely _look_ at him, in his fucking _bed_. Let alone make any steps towards empathising with the bastard.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” Kirk said, speaking softly, as if loud noises might startle him. “I’d thought – god, I’d _hoped_ you would. I remembered you being a good, logical man, a _clever_ man, and then the last few days-” he broke off. Leonard glared at him. Yeah, those last few days were he’d been lying to Leonard to the point of violation. Shockingly, still a sore topic. “But you don’t get it, do you?” he asked. “You don’t get what’s going on here.”

“Enlighten me.”

For some reason, Kirk almost smiled at that. “You radioed in for help?”

Leonard nodded sharply. “About an hour ago now.”

Kirk raised an eyebrow. “Not immediately? You could get in trouble for that.”

“I’m going to get in trouble anyway,” Leonard shot back. “The DIA tends to disapproving of fraternising with the enemy. Especially in a biblical sense.” He didn’t say that he’d spent several hours trying to figure out _what_ to do. He couldn’t confess how long he’d debated just leaving in the morning like nothing had ever happened. It was for the same reason that he hadn’t even taken the safety off his gun.

“Are you going to try guilting me now?” Leonard continued when Kirk didn’t respond. “Try the whole ‘your death’s on my head’ deal?”

Kirk shrugged. “Don’t need to.”

“What?”

“Well, for starters, you’re clearly already thinking it,” Kirk explained casually. “But anyway, a more _interesting_ topic to discuss would be how curious you must still be.”

Should have figured Kirk wouldn’t say what Leonard expected. He hadn’t yet. “I’m not curious. You’re a cold-hearted bastard, what else is there to know?” Leonard said, trying to keep his voice steady.

But Kirk just shook his head. “No, no, not about me. About _you_. You said it yourself, first night.”

“Why did the Admiral send me.”

He shouldn’t have opened his _fucking mouth_ , he realised the instant he finished Kirk’s statement for him. For starters, it brought the infuriating gleefully smug expression back on Kirk’s face.

For another, it forced him to realise that this case might not be as clear-cut as he’d been told it was. And, damn it, Leonard just wanted someone else to deal with this so he could _go home_.

“Yes! Yes,” Kirk agreed, grinning. Not something a captive would usually do to the person holding a gun on him, but then. The pretence that Leonard was in control had never really existed in the first place. “Why would he send someone so inexperienced on a mission that could massively impact the most important investigation the DIA’s had for years? It’s because you’re disposable-”

“Okay, I think you can shut up now,” Leonard said quietly. He shouldn’t be _listening_ to this –

“Well, no, you’re not disposable, of course you’re not, but to Marcus you’re easily dismissed. If you found something, he could say it was nothing and blame your inexperience.”

“God, you’re insane-” _But I’d always thought there was something off, right?_

But Kirk wasn’t going to stay silent, because, and gods fucking damn it, he could tell that Leonard was listening. “It’s the same reason why he surrounded you with foreigners – a Russian kid, a pilot of Japanese descent – the only people he’d have to convince would be other old racist white men like him, and they’d be all too ready to believe that Sulu and Chekov would be traitors-”

“Coincidence,” Leonard whispered, but he was starting to lose certainty. But the autopsy – _the autopsy showed he knew his attacker. That doesn’t narrow it down to James Kirk_.

Kirk was watching him from the bed – _Leonard’s_ bed – with wide eyes. And the hope, the fucking _hope_ in them hurt almost as much as the realisation that this man that Leonard had liked, God, _really liked_ had been betraying him the whole goddamn time.

“C’mon, you know there’s something to this,” Kirk said. He was pleading, all but begging. “I’m not lying, I’m not, the only time I ever lied to you was about my name. Everything else was the truth, every word. Please. _Please_ , Bones.”

It was strange how close forgiveness and fury were. And, damn, he’d had Leonard going, but at that nickname – Leonard wanted to throw up.

Rushed footsteps echoed in the corridor. Both Leonard and Kirk looked towards the door. “I really am sorry,” Kirk muttered. “Please remember that.”

A thousand scenarios ran through Leonard’s head in the seconds before the door opened. Kirk could be arrested, obviously, but there was also the huge French windows, and on the first floor they could be outside and around the front before the SWAT team realised –

Leonard didn’t recognise the first two people that walked through the door, one tall man with black eyes and sharp features, the other a woman with dark skin and a darker expression. He recognised the third – Hikaru.

“We don’t have much time,” Hikaru said as he entered the room, quietly closing the door behind him. He wasn’t looking at Leonard.

He was looking at Kirk.

“All transmissions to Pavel were being recorded, he said we’d probably only have a couple of hours before the DIA figures out you’re here,” he continued, looking scared.

The other tall man added, with a wry smile. “So, Jim, you should probably get dressed.”

Leonard felt like he’d been doused with cold water. “Oh, you’ve got to be… _fuck_.”

The woman blinked at him, before turning to Kirk. “You didn’t tell him?”

“Didn’t really have time,” Kirk muttered, taking the clothes Hikaru was offering him. “What about Chekov, is he-”

“He’s heading to us, we got him on a flight here via Germany,” Hikaru said, sounding sick to his stomach. “Should make him harder to track.”

“The boy will be fine,” the nameless man said. “He has more intelligence than you credit him with. Now, however, introductions might be in order.”

Kirk turned back to Leonard as he buttoned up his shirt, covering the scars that made him so distinctive. He was still begging, if only with his eyes. “Dr Leonard McCoy, meet Spock and Uhura, analysts and linguists for the DIA, respectively. Hikaru Sulu you already know. Together with Chekov, they make up the only other people in the world that believe that I am innocent and that the DIA is corrupt.”

“I suggest you use the next few minutes to pack a bag of essentials, Doctor,” Spock said calmly. “I’m afraid we will have to take you with us.”

As the final, disastrous revelation sunk in, Leonard grabbed the whiskey bottle he’d set down and threw it against the wall by Kirk’s head. He screamed as the glass shattered.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Part two coming... give it a couple of months.


End file.
